At the age of thirteen he moved back to the US, where he received higher education and worked as a journalist, director, lawyer, and businessman, before finally devoting his efforts to writing.

[4] At age 13 his parents separated and the two boys moved with their mother back to the US, where Mueenuddin spent five years at prep-school, Groton School in MA, graduating in 1981.

[3][7] The summer of his graduation he returned to Pakistan where his father, in his 80s was in failing health, and losing control of the prosperous family mango farm to its managers.

[4] Mueenuddin recalled it as a lonely and arduous life, but one well suited to Daniyal, who spent early mornings writing poetry, and evenings reading through the library that his mother had left behind.

He ran the farm as a business, and not in the traditional feudal way like many of his neighbors, by "hiring good managers, paying them well, and demanding a lot of them.

[16] In 1993, with the farm running fairly smoothly, he decided to spend time in the West again[9] and moved back to the US where he attended Yale Law School for three years, serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law and as Director of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic.

After graduation he worked briefly at Human Rights Watch and then as a corporate lawyer at the New York firm Debevoise & Plimpton between 1998 and 2001.

[7][9] However he found the life unsatisfying and decided to begin a new career in writing, explaining that: Sitting in my office on the forty-second floor of a black skyscraper in Manhattan, looking out over the East river, I gradually developed confidence in the stories I had lived through during those years on the farm.

[20] Mueenuddin's first published story, "Our Lady of Paris," which appeared in Zoetrope, was a finalist for the 2007 National Magazine Awards in fiction.